Elements of Intellectual Science Author:Noah Porter Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION. PSYCHOLOGY AND THE SOUL. Psychelogy, kimin-t PSYCHOLOGY DEFINED AND VINDICATED. § 1. Psychology is the science of the human soul. ... more » 0 Psy The appellation is of comparatively receiit use by English writers, but is now generally accepted as the most appropriate term to denote the scientific knowledge of the whole soul, as distinguished from a single class of its endowments or functions. The terms in frequent use — mental philosophy, the philosophy of the mind, intellectual philosophy, etc. — should be strictly limited to a single power of the soul, i. e., its power to know, and should never be extended to its capacity to feel and to will, or to all its endowments collectively. The terms metaphysics and philosophy, when used without an adjunct, cannot designate any special science, but only one which is general and fundamental to all the sciences, both material and psychical. § 2. Psychology is a science. It professes to exhibit what is actually known or may be learned con- JJioS '" cerning the soul, in the forms of science — i. e., in the forms of exact observation, precise definition, fixed terminology, classified arrangement, and rational explanation. It is the science of the soul; i. e., the science which has the soul for its subject-matter. Soul differs from spirit as the species from the genus ; soul being limited to a spirit that either is or has been connected with a body or material organization ; while spirit may also be applied to a being that has at present no such connection, or is believed never to have had any. The term soul originally signified the principle of life or mo- 1 tion in a material organism. It was especially appropriated to the vital principle which was supposed to animate the body, whether in man or the l...« less